Re: Shenzhen Purezone Air Purifiers

A Reader writes:

Hi Ed,

Love your site,

Thank you for all the good information and reviews.

Do you know anything about Purezone air purifiers? Located at this site primarily:

http://purezone.en.ecplaza.net

They say no filters are used and it's only "photo-plasma/photocatalytic oxidation/anion" cleaning the air; which I'm guessing it's hydroxyl and negative ions.

But is there a difference between photo-plasma and photocatalytic?

Thanks for any information.

Ed's Reply: Shenzhen Purezone Air Purifiers

Hey Reader;

The "Purezone" you refer to is a mainland Chinese builder, Shenzhen Purezone Technology Co., Ltd, located in the high-tech/finance boomtown economic district adjacent to Hong Kong.

This is a prestige location, with sufficient government financial support, as opposed to Chinese interior industrial locations, which may be intended mainly to provide regional manufacturing jobs.

I am enthusiastic about Japanese-built machines, which with some leading Korean air cleaners I have called the "Asian invasion."

Taiwan has exported a few semi-successful air cleaners.

But there are literally thousands of new air cleaners coming out of mainland China. Few have achieved the critical mass needed to penetrate overbuilt export markets. The majority are from small engineering shops with no hope of ever making it.

No mainland-built air purifiers are endorsed or recommended here, unless they have stateside marketing and support well established. This almost always implies a US partner to do the marketing. Many department store and infomercial marketed "American" air purifiers are actually built in China.

Shenzhen Purezone has made the common mistake of using a crude English translation of their native language web brochure. This is generally evidence of unpreparedness, and therefore unlikely success, in the super-competitive western markets.

Unfortunately for the company, they have chosen to market under a keyword - "purezone" - which is already dominated by other products. L'Oreal purezone, a skin cleanser, and a Purezone.com site selling a specialized HEPA filtered purifier that blows air through the user's pillowcase.

The company's website, www.purezone.com.cn has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 15,389,987 - not much western traffic.

Photo-plasma and Photocatalytic

The Shenzhen Purezone air cleaners employ a mid-powered 15 Watt ultraviolet lamp, hence the "photo-plasma."

Photo-plasma is technical jargon for an electrically charged (ionized) gas excited by UV radiation.

A gas is excited into a plasma state when the energy input causes electrons to dissociate from atomic nuclei, which then become positively charged.

Water molecules exposed to the ions split into hydroxyl and super-oxide ions. These radicals are powerful oxidizers, capable of destroying very fine particles to .1 or maybe .2 microns, and destabilizing microorganisms.

Larger particulate will not be destroyed, so the Shenzhen Purezones should be considered adjuncts to, not a substitute for, a good quality true-HEPA air purifier.

The process is very similar to the plasma-ion air purifiers - Sharp Plasmaclusters and Winix Plasmawave come to mind - except that UV light is the energy source.

The addition of a thin coating of Titanium dioxide catalyst turns the photoplasma machine into a photocatalytic (PCO) air cleaner. The catalyst layer accelerates the process of hydroxyl radical formation for better oxidation.

For the full article on PCO see:

Photocatalytic Air Purifier Basics

Purezone Ozone!

Shenzhen Purezone offers 4 air cleaner models; Purezone, Purezone Flora, Purezone Aeolus, and Purezone Artemis.

Each product description contains the following line: "Ozone released: <0.06ppm."

This is unacceptably high ozone emission.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Underwriters Laboratory's UL standard for indoor ozone emissions is < .050 ppm.

All air purifier shoppers who do not completely understand the above are strongly encouraged to review my page on ozone dangers in air cleaners:

Ozone Danger!

Despite the slick electonic controls and stylishly colored Asian wrappers, the Shenzhen Purezone Air Purifiers are basically Biozone air cleaner knockoffs.

Notice the extreme similarity to Biozone - technical specs and even the semi-round style with horizontal vents.

See my Biozone 1000 Review.

Buyers of the Purezone, Purezone Flora, Purezone Aeolus, and Purezone Artemis are taking a big chance on uncertain future support and unproven mainland quality, not to mention significant ozone health hazards.

But hey, you could buy one and be the first to review it here. I bet a good user writeup would rank in Google's top 10 listings for the keyword "Purezone Artemis Review."

Best wishes for cleaner air,

Ed

Flora, Aeolus, Artemis